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Democrats, Republicans make peace with budget cuts coming Friday

By Jonathan Weisman New York Times News Service

Posted:
02/27/2013 10:47:08 PM MST

Updated:
02/27/2013 10:48:14 PM MST

WASHINGTON -- With time running short and little real effort under way to avert automatic budget cuts that take effect on Friday, substantial and growing wings of both parties are learning to live with -- if not love -- the so-called sequester.

"It's going to happen," said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a leading conservative voice in the House. "It's not the end of the world."

For weeks, President Barack Obama has warned of the dire consequences of the cuts to military readiness, educators, air travel and first responders even as the White House acknowledges that some of the disruptions will take weeks to emerge.

The reverse side has gone unmentioned: Some of the most liberal members of Congress see the cuts as a rare opportunity to whittle down Pentagon spending. The poor are already shielded from the worst of the cuts, and the process could take pressure off the Democratic Party, at least in the short run, to tamper with Social Security and Medicare.

At the same time, the president gets some relief from the drumbeat of budget news to focus on his top policy priorities: immigration and gun control.

And Republicans, while denouncing the level of military cuts and the ham-handedness of the budget scythe, finally see the government shrinking in real dollars.

The bipartisan talking point has held that the $1.2 trillion in cuts over a decade, established in the 2011 Budget Control Act, were intended to be so onerous to both sides that they would force Republicans and Democrats to unite around a bipartisan, comprehensive deficit package that raised taxes and slowed entitlement spending.

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